bluefromkzoo

This is sad. Call me old-fashioned (or just plain old) but I can't imagine any civilized place without a daily newspaper, emphasis on the news, which AnnArbor.com clearly doesn't plan to report in any meaningful way.

For a paper of its size The Ann Arbor News is damned good, and a thousand times better than in my student days, when it was known as a Republican rag. It boggles the mind to think of a vibrant, progressive, important place like A2 with nobody keeping watch on the powers that be. Does anybody think the Freep or Detroit News (or anybody else) would've invested the effort the News did in the series on academics and athletics?

I never caught the Stooges but saw Destroy All Monsters many times at various places and always loved Ron's playing. He was one of the many great Detroit musicians who never found much fame or fortune, yet influenced damn near everybody who came along later. Try to imagine the rock of the last 35+ years without Stooges sound and fury.

Considering what was at stake, this was perhaps the single worst performance I've seen in 36 years of watching Michigan football. Except for a few brief moments, they played like they've played every other game this year...which is the strongest indictment of all. For Ohio State, nobody could find a way to play or coach any better. Nobody could summon up anything that might've made a difference. Same turnovers, defensive breakdowns, and offensive ineptitude.

I know this game pretty well by now and I'm a patient man but if next year isn't significantly better I'll be outside the castle with a torch.

Amen to everything Beilein and Sims said. I'm (for better or worse) old enough to remember Johnny Orr and Cazzie Russell, and people did get excited about basketball in those days. Let's hope they're back to stay.

I don't get the tackling either. Nor do I understand why the coaches never seem to adjust to their opponents. From the way Purdue's running game took off in the second half, it was obvious that their offensive staff had changed things up, while Michigan's D stood pat.

It's true that this year's team, despite all the returning starters, doesn't have impact players like Branch, Hall, and Crable. But when a defense gets worse during a season -- with the same, uninjured personnel -- something is badly wrong with the coaches and the schemes. Remember, Carr and Herrmann (sp?) ran a 3-4 a few years back and it didn't work too well either, though it never bellyflopped as catastrophically as this. Maybe they just didn't have the right guys for it. Maybe Rodriguez and Schafer still don't. So why not get the best out of what's there??

Nobody is immune to breakdowns anymore, but the best programs always recover. A few years ago, Alabama went through the worst kind of coaching upheaval, while closer to home, everybody thought Joe Paterno was done. So guess which teams might meet in this year's national championship game?

Whatever you think of Rodriguez, Shafer, and Threet right now, this is no time to be a fair-weather fan. I just acquired an "M Go Blue" car plate and a bottle opener that plays "Hail To The Victors" and will proudly use both for the rest of the season. Hang in there.

Sigh...leave it to our "fans" to take a man's farewell to a decade of work, written with some honest emotion and without a smidgen of bile, and turn it into a snarkfest. For my money, this guy was always a pro: fair, insightful, and accurate, even when I didn't agree with him. Best of luck.

Who knew civility was so controversial? From the number of posts, you'd think Jim had written something like, "Bo wasn't so great." But as usual, he makes a good point. Twenty+ years before that Syracuse game, on a gorgeous day in a game Michigan eventually won, I saw some middle-aged mope screaming "G**d**** you!!!" at a 19 or 20-year-old player on his own team who'd made a mistake. I don't know if I ever booed the home team before that moment, but I sure haven't since.

"Right" isn't the issue, guys. You have a right to boo. You also have a right to wear plaid pants with a polka-dot shirt or play your car stereo loud enough to rattle the windows three blocks away, but those things aren't too classy either.

Too right, tom. The sad part is that in spite of everything, this team -- not next year's team with a "real spread QB" etc -- has the potential to be pretty good. This week, Threet looked like a passer, McGuffie went over 100 yards (and zero fumbles), and the young receivers started to step up. But with all those frosh On the Road in a Big Game, mistakes happen, and as you point out, the veterans are not playing well enough to compensate. Ezeh, for instance, was all over the field at Utah. Today, I rarely heard his number called.

I don't usually offer advices to coaches (and they don't usually listen), but at the very least, Rodriguez should do two things immediately: bench Stevie Brown and name Threet the starter once and for all. Gotta start somewhere.

It's about time somebody shot Michigan's pretensions full of holes. It's not news that athletes often try to skate by with as little academic effort as possible. Even in my day, 30+ years ago, there were certain courses that were well known for being easy to pass and attracted a bunch of football players. What's newsworthy is that "the Harvard of the Midwest" not only tolerated but facilitated this syndrome, cut all kinds of corners to keep people eligible, and swept them out the door with degrees that might be useless.

I found it amusing that one of the professors quoted in the first article said, "We're not Auburn." He's right. Florida State, maybe.

All I can say is that if the word about Mallet is true, he and Bobby Petrino are truly a match made in (hog?) heaven. Anybody want to give odds that Petrino will still be around in four years, after Mallet's sit-out year and his three more eligible ones?

To me, this guy seems like the Nuke LaLoosh of Michigan football: a million-dollar arm and a ten-cent head. Even with a new coach and system, he'd be the heir apparent if he stayed, but now he'll have to sit a year and probably try to beat out an incumbent starter, and there's no telling how it'll shake out. Not that his parents' heads are any better. They're not even making a pretense of him actually getting an education or learning anything other than Xs and Os.

Well. I hope you're right, BigBlue. Unless Martin has a few rabbits in his hat, I don't know who else but Miles they could hire and keep any credibility at all. Hoping for a miracle a la Tressel just doesn't cut it.

While nobody really knows yet what Carr's role in all this has been, Dufek's comments make it clear that Bo was protecting him. A lot of coaches would've been ridden out of town on a rail after going 7-5 and tanking in the Alamo Bowl. And whether or not Miles is the right replacement, he was treated incredibly shabbily. His teammates have every right to be steamed and I'm glad they are. This program desperately needs a dose of sunlight, which is what Harbaugh was trying to bring in with his comments about the academics.

Unfortunately, Martin isn't likely to do anything differently unless he feels his job is on the line, and Coleman doesn't seem inclined to get involved. The institutional arrogance in this place would never permit her to admit being swayed by public opinion.

My only response to Martin is a line borrowed from the great Nat King Cole: "Your story is touching, but it sounds like a lie."

Come on. Not even a Michigan guy could be that stodgy or that dense. I can only conclude that the silence was deliberate and Michigan simply wasn't interested in Miles, either because the internal opposition was too strong or because Martin and Coleman didn't want a public and probably expensive tug-of-war with LSU. But how else do they expect to find a winning coach in today's environment? I have to wonder if their reluctance to wheel and deal isn't just more of that famous Michigan elitism with a dash of disdain for the SEC and the South in general. "Hey, we're the Harvard of the Midwest. We don't tussle with folks who eat crawfish and drive pickups."

Jim made the point a couple of columns back that Michigan wants to be about more than football. This I admire. But right now, the public must be thinking that Michigan really IS just about football -- and can't even get it right.

While Carr's opposition was probably a factor, I wouldn't underestimate the rebuilding issue either. Imagine you're the next coach and look at your inheritance: a young quarterback whose head seems to be thicker than his biceps, a tailback by committee where a potential star (McGuffie) isn't even enrolled yet, an D-line that needs work, an O-line that needs more, and a fan base that'll be screaming for maize and blue blood with your first loss. What's needed is somebody who's handled a similar situation before and won't be cowed, but I have no idea who.

I've been in that profession myself, and inevitably a time comes when you have to trust your gut and your sources on something huge. This is where we separate the real reporters -- like Jim -- from the bloggers and boardniks.

If this is true, everybody from ESPN to Bill Martin to John Wangler to mgoblue.com will have some serious egg on their faces. Crazy, ain't it? No crazier than rooting for Ohio State to make it to the national championship, though, and that's what I'm doing today. Go Blue!